Madison Rafah Journal

On Wednesday, January 30, from 12 noon – 1 pm, the Rafah journalist and blogger Mohammed Omer will be interviewed on “A Public Affair” on WORT (89.9 fm) by host Esty Dinur.

Omer, who visited Madison last year and shared his stunning and visceral images of life and death in occupied Gaza, will give eye-witness reports and analysis of this week’s massive Gaza revolt. We are hopeful that he will be joined by members of MRSCP’s partner in Rafah, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. Call in at 256-2001.

The vigil has been cancelled due to weather

Vigil in Support of the Gaza Prison Break and
Against the Continuing Siege of Gaza

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
6:15-7:00pm
Lowell Center, 610 Langdon St., Madison

The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project will hold a candlelight vigil to support our Rafah friends, and all the other people of Gaza, more than 350,000 of whom this week have courageously broken through the Israeli wall that starves and cruelly imprisons them. And we will protest the still on-going siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel, financed and supported by the United States.

This vigil will take place from 6:15 to 7:00 pm on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 outside the Lowell Center, where Mr. David Makovsky will be speaking on the current situation in the Middle East. Makovsky represents WINEP, or Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a prominent neo-conservative think-tank allied with the U.S. Israel lobby AIPAC, the Bush Administration, and the right wing in Israeli politics. It espouses the continuation of the siege and destruction of Gaza, as well as the rapidly escalating application of these inhuman and illegal policies to rest of the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Makovsky, Director of the so-called Project on the Middle East Peace Process at WINEP is an adviser to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice whose failed Middle East initiatives at Annapolis and elsewhere deliberately perpetuate policies contravening international law including the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

We invite the public to join us in a Vigil in Solidarity with the People of Gaza and against the on-going destruction of Palestine and the Palestinian national movement. (Read on …)

The Rebuilding Alliance Board and team ask your help to purchase food and medicine for Gaza

Please Donate Now

As I write, the Nasrallah family (the family Rachel Corrie sought to protect form the IDF bulldozer that threatened them and their Rafah home) is arranging to bring a first truckload of food and medicine through the Egyptian checkpoints into Rafah Gaza, for distribution to Rafah’s Nongovernmental Organizations. Our partners at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) are working with them to purchase a specific list of medicines.

Will you help us raise $5000 for food and medical supplies? Khaled Nasrallah, who many of you met when he and his wife and daughter joined Cindy and Craig Corrie on their U.S. speaking tour, is coordinating logistics. Husam El Nounou and the medical team at GCMHP have given them a list of the medicines and supplies they need.

Khaled and Husam say the situation is very difficult with the border likely to close in a couple of days. Palestinians can go no further in Egypt than Al Arish, and are barricaded from entering the rest of the country. Prices in Egypt have skyrocketed as stores sold-out. In the meantime, the Nasrallahs (who parents still live in Egypt) are drawing upon their friends and family in Alexandria to cross through the Egyptian checkpoints with food and medicine.

Anything you can give would be sincerely appreciated. All funds will go for purchase of food and medicine. Please Donate Now

Sincerely,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance (Read on …)

Palestinian children play on top of the bombed metal fence that used to separate the Gaza Strip and Egypt at Rafah, 24 January 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

More texts followed, as I received periodical updates on the situation in Rafah, where it was 3am. (Read on …)

Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 23 Jan 2008

Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after militants blew up a border wall, and stocked up on food and fuel in short supply because of an Israeli blockade.

“Those people are hungry for freedom, for food and for everything,” said an Egyptian shopkeeper who gave her name only as Hamida, surveying shelves emptied swiftly by Gazans paying with Egyptian pounds and Israeli shekels.

The fall of the Rafah wall punched a new hole in efforts by Israel, under frequent rocket attack from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, to keep pressure on the territory in the face of an international outcry over shortages and Palestinian hardship. (Read on …)

Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP,

If you haven’t watched the news today, last night unknown parties blew at least seven holes in the massive Israeli wall between Rafah and the Egyptian border and today the UN estimates that up to 350,000 Gazans have been streaming back and forth across the border to Egypt to buy food, medicine, fuel, cement, cigarettes, and every imaginable thing that has been blockaded by Israel. (Of course, this does not restore electricity or water service or power to hospitals as Israel retains tight restrictions on diesel fuel entering the strip.)

For video footage, click here.

For pictures, click here: Gaza border break

This amazing event is taking place in the context of a week of protests against the seige of Gaza all over the world…just yesterday there were angry and desperate protests by 3000 women in Rafah at the border, some succeeded in crossing into Egypt but were detained and sent back after clashing with Egyptian police that injured many. It is reported also that a shipment of emergency aid from Egypt had just been denied entry into Gaza through the Israeli-controlled Keren Shalom crossing. So for some reason, Egypt has decided not to intervene for the time being. There are also protests in Egypt in support of the seige break. It is unclear how long the border will remain open.

The US, true to form, has just blocked a UN security council resolution condemning the Israeli seige of Gaza. (Read on …)

Hello there!

Like you and all the people in Gaza, I am really delighted with the breaking of the border fences. That was the only and best way possible to break the Israeli cordon. Well, I did not go shopping and I will buy my needs from the merchants who bring in large quantities of everything needed. There are some logistic problems on the road that oblige people sometimes to jump over walls or walk in the fields. Immediately after the checkpoint, one has to walk for a long distance before he gets to a park where commuter cars are permitted on the Egyptian side. This part is unseen by the media. The end purpose is breaking the wall and getting life needs. Let me tell you that after President Mubarak’s short statement to Al Jazeera the situation between Rafah and el-Arish improved and cars were allowed to travel freely on the official roads. Anyway, and by all means, what happened was a real relief for millions of people in Gaza and Sinai. All the Palestinians stranded on the border, Rafah and el-Arish arrived home in Gaza after months of the inhumane conditions they passed through.

The Egyptian markets are cheaper than ours and the Egyptian pound is cheaper than the Israeli shekel. Large quantities of medicine, foodstuffs, olive oil, new and used cars, spare parts, cement, iron bars. In short, they brought everything that you may imagine to be available on the Egyptian market. This popular movement also refreshed the el-Arish market, as that market was originally limited, weak and isolated, and it usually sells only to Sinai bedouins and the population of el-Arish city itself. Merchants and small business people expressed their joy because of the arrival of the Palestinians and wished it to last as long as possible. These are heydays for el-Arish business as well as for the Palestinian business people.

Like you I watched Aljazeera English in all its reports from Rafah. I was busy writing a report on the situation of Gaza agriculture and farmers’ living conditions after the latest incursions. The report was written in English for a local NGO in Gaza.

I am sorry that I was unable to write any messages in the last few days! We had no electric power to operate the computer or any other device that needs electric power, the nerve of life. I do not think that there is a chance for you to provide support but you can be an advocate for our cause if you are convinced that we are right. Life in this remote part of the world is totally unlike your in too many ways. Politics crosses all domains of life in a serious manner. Everything is strongly connected to politics! (Read on …)

Just weeks after the Annapolis parade, Bush on tour to Israel has given carte blanche to Olmert for whatever level of violence against Palestinians he pleases

Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly, 17 – 23 January 2008

Although the leader of the rightist opposition in Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu, is known for his coldness and disinclination towards praising others, he departed from character when he gave his impression of his meeting with US President George W Bush at dawn last Thursday in Jerusalem. He expressed surprise over Bush’s insistence on putting an end to the “threat” represented by the Iranian nuclear programme — that Israeli strategists say threatens Israel in particular — as well as Bush’s insistence that Israel must strike the Palestinian resistance and “break its back”. “I came out of that meeting more reassured towards Bush’s determination to end the Iranian threat, and comfortable with his pledge to provide a cover for any military activity Israel might undertake in Gaza. If matters were left to this president, he would not allow any Palestinian terrorist to remain alive,” he told Hebrew- language Israeli radio Thursday morning.

Following meetings between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the two announced harmonious positions on Iran’s nuclear programme. Yediot Aharonot, the most widely circulated Israeli newspaper, revealed that Bush agreed during his meeting with Olmert to coordinate with Israel in directing a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. All Israeli officials who met with Bush stated that he indisputably affirmed that there is no importance to a report issued recently by American domestic intelligence and stating that Iran halted development of its nuclear programme for military purposes in 2003.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s deputy defence minister and officially charged with facing strategic threats, considered the content of Bush’s speech given in the United Arab Emirates Sunday and directed at the Iranian people as evidence that the American administration has “completely adopted the Israeli conception” of confronting the “Iranian threat and other sources of threat in the region, led by Hizbullah and Hamas.” With regard to American authorisation for Israel to do as it sees fit with regard to striking the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, this was considered by Israel the most important achievement of Bush’s visit.

Hebrew-language Israeli television noted that Olmert was surprised by the hasty agreement of Bush to Israel waging a wide-scale military campaign against the Gaza Strip though he was informed that it would affect hundreds and even thousands of Palestinian civilians. Those close to Olmert say they breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that there was no longer any need for the heads of Israeli security and intelligence agencies to explain to Bush the reasons behind waging a wide-scale campaign against Gaza. While Bush asked Olmert to exert efforts to avoid affecting civilians, he departed having placed in Olmert’s hands permission to do whatever he pleases, with all that means with regard to providing American diplomatic cover when Israel puts its plan into execution phase. (Read on …)